Apella was trying to wrestle the disruptor pistol away from the other. Kirk fired the captured weapon again and the second Klingon dropped. Kirk snatched up his disruptor and handed it to Apella. For all his supposed influence, the governor had never been trusted with one. After Kirk offered a quick lesson, they set off toward the freighter, staying close to the buildings, using shadows for cover when they could. They wouldn’t have much time. As soon as anyone found those guards, the alarm would be sounded and the place would be overrun. If, that was, there were enough Klingons around to mount an effective search. His mad idea would never work if the Klingons had more than a skeleton crew aboard the ship.
So far, their luck was holding. They hugged the last building before the open space of the launch pad. As they reached the corner, they saw just two Klingons outside the freighter.
One was Krell.
The Klingon was deep in conversation with a female, a little taller than he and broader through the shoulders. “Do you think you can shoot her?” Kirk asked.
“I have never fired this weapon,” Apella said. “If I had a rifle, yes.”
“Same principle,” Kirk said. “This won’t kick like a rifle does, but you’ll aim it and push that button like I showed you.”
“I will try, then.”
“Let me take care of Krell,” Kirk said.
Apella eyed Kirk with his chin thrust forward, his forehead wrinkled. He didn’t like taking orders. But the fire that blazed in his eyes for a moment faded quickly. He didn’t like it, but he was used to it. He’d taken orders from Krell for long enough, and now he was taking them from Kirk. He resented it, though, and that would make him potentially dangerous. “Yes,” he said flatly.
Kirk whispered a couple more quick instructions, then counted down on his fingers. On one, they stepped around the corner. “Krell!” Kirk said.
Both Klingons whirled to face them. Apella fired while they were still reaching for their weapons, and the female keeled over backward. “Freeze, Krell,” Kirk warned. He nodded toward Apella. “His was set to stun, but mine’s not. Keep your hands away from your belt.”
Krell looked like he wanted to argue, but he saw the expression on Apella’s face and thought better of it. He had a disruptor pistol and a knife at his waist. “Take his weapons, Apella,” Kirk said. “I’ve got you covered.”
Apella stepped forward, still carrying his stolen disruptor. “You might want to put that weapon down, Apella,” Kirk suggested.
Apella visibly cringed. Kirk figured he was probably blushing, too, but he couldn’t see the man’s face. Apella squatted and set the weapon gingerly on the ground, then straightened and continued to Krell. Apella had been ordered around by his former captive, and then embarrassed in front of Krell. Kirk guessed there was a fifty-fifty chance that Apella would turn one of Krell’s weapons on his one-time master. And then perhaps on him.
“Make it quick, Apella,” he said. They were within full view of the freighter here. If anyone came out, they were done.
Apella determinedly maintained a steady pace. A small rebellion. Maybe it would ease some of the pressure building inside him, but it could also get them both killed. Kirk decided not to push the issue, and he remained quiet until Apella had the disruptor and the knife.
When he had returned to the weapon he’d laid down, picked it up, and put Krell’s weapons in his waistband, Kirk spoke again. “Krell, we’re boarding that ship. I only want it for a few minutes, to try to put a stop to that battle. It’s to your advantage, too. Your soldiers have better weapons than the locals, but they’re badly outnumbered.”
“There is no dishonor in dying a warrior’s death,” Krell said.
“There’s no dishonor in not dying, either. Let’s go.”
“You will have to kill me,” Krell said.
“I can arrange that,” Kirk replied. “But like I said, we’re in a hurry, and it’ll be easier with your cooperation.”
“Do you know nothing of Klingon culture, Kirk?”
“Not much. You’re warlike, imperialistic, and you don’t mind pushing around people weaker than you. Is there more?”
“So much. I am surprised at your ignorance. And saddened. We are a great people.”
Kirk knew more than he was letting on, but he didn’t want to get into it. They might already be too late to prevent wholesale slaughter. Krell was right, there was more to Klingon culture, but he didn’t like the Klingons he’d met so far, and he didn’t trust this one.
“We can have a cultural awareness session later on, Krell,” he said. “For now, let’s get aboard this ship. And don’t tell me again that I’ll have to kill you, because if you do, I’ll have to kill you.”
A momentary smile flashed across Krell’s face, and was gone as quickly. Kirk must have looked surprised, because Krell arched an eyebrow at him. “You didn’t know Klingons had a sense of humor, Kirk? I see you truly are ignorant about us.”
“Move, Krell,” Kirk said. Impatience lent his voice an angry edge. “Now. While there’s anybody left to save, on either side.”
“Very well,” Krell said. “But only because I have so often told Apella not to wipe out his best source of labor.”
Kirk didn’t bother to point out that Krell wouldn’t need Neuralese laborers anymore. That conversation would come soon enough, and for the moment, he wanted Krell’s cooperation. “We’ve got one chance to prevent that,” Kirk replied. “But we’re almost out of time.”
Krell led them onto the ship and through a warren of narrow, smoky corridors to the dimly lit bridge. When they encountered Klingons on the way, Krell ordered them to leave the ship. Kirk knew that at some point, Krell would turn on him. The only question was when.
Krell spoke to the bridge crew in Klingon, and they responded in kind. Most of them left, as Kirk had instructed, but it made him uneasy. He had told Krell to tell the ship’s crew that they were taking honored guests on a short victory flight, to let their appointed governor experience the sensation. But he had no way of knowing what was being said.
“Speak Neuralese,” he said. “Or Federation Standard.”
“I merely told them what you instructed me to,” Krell said, returning to the language of Neural. “Only the bare minimum of crew necessary to operate the ship has remained onboard.”
“And they’ll cooperate?”
“They have given their word. We do not give that lightly. Prepare yourselves.”
“Hang on to something,” Kirk warned Apella. He spread his own feet out for balance. “This isn’t like anything you’ve ever felt.”
The heavy freighter rumbled and rocked as it lifted off the pad. Although Apella had grabbed a railing, he looked a little green.
“Now what, Kirk?” Krell asked.
Kirk knew that a Klingon bird-of-prey could take off vertically, and it could be maneuvered close to the ground. He hoped the same was true of freighters—he had seen them lift off from the pad, but he had never had occasion to find out how maneuverable they were at low altitude. “I want to come in low.” He was about to add more when one of the bridge instruments began an insistent beeping. “What’s that?”
“An alert,” Krell replied casually. “Something I forgot to mention.”
“An alert about what?”
“When I first learned that you were here on Neural, Kirk, I sent a message back to Qo’noS. A bird-of-prey, the ChonnaQ, was dispatched. By the time it got here, you were a guest of Apella’s, so I suggested that it wait, just outside Neural’s atmosphere. When we lifted off without the proper signal, it began its approach, in case it needs to blow this freighter from the sky.”
“You’d sacrifice this ship? Its crew? The leutrinium?”
“I told you that I would cooperate with your plan, Kirk. And might I remind you, you have not told me yet what it is. But as far as the ChonnaQ is concerned, this is an unauthorized appropriation of a Klingon vessel, and that will be dealt with as such. One day—if you lived long enough—you
might have come to understand us. It appears that day will never come.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Kirk said. “Now I need to take over your flight controls for a few minutes. Apella, if anybody has a problem with that, shoot them.”
“I would be happy to,” Apella said. He was starting to like this turning of the tables a little too much, Kirk thought. He couldn’t worry about it now, though. He climbed up into the raised command platform and sat down at the controls. This ship’s systems were foreign to him, but he’d had some basic instruction in Klingon technology at the Academy, and refreshers since.
The displays were not so different from Starfleet standards that he couldn’t make some sense of them, even though he couldn’t read the Klingon text alongside the visuals. A triangle, flashing red, probably indicated the bird-of-prey coming toward them.
He checked his path through the viewscreen, and using the flight controls, he steered the ship over the outbuildings and toward the smelter. He recalled that Klingon birds-of-prey carried photon torpedoes. He doubted that freighters did, and that was too much firepower for his purposes anyway. He wanted a distraction, not a catastrophe.
When he had a clear view of the smelter building, he called Krell over. “Disruptor cannon?” he asked. “This control here?”
“Yes,” Krell said.
“Good.” Kirk stopped with his hand poised above the control and hoped this was the right decision.
Thirty-One
Tyree ran to the smelter building. The usual racket had stopped, and when he burst through the door Tyree saw why. The place was almost deserted. Those working here must have gone to the pit when they heard the sounds of battle.
“Clear everyone out,” James had said. “Freeholder, Victor, or Klingon, it doesn’t matter. You need to empty that building.”
“Get out!” Tyree shouted as he ran inside. His words echoed back to him. He had only been in the place once, but the quiet surprised him. The heat didn’t—apparently even with no one tending it, the furnace still blazed. But whatever made the constant booming noises was still.
“Why should we?” a voice asked. Tyree peered into the gloom of the building’s depths and saw a pair of Victors, armed with rifles, emerging from the shadows surrounding a bank of machinery. One was female, and she pointed her weapon at Tyree. “Why should we do anything a Freeholder dog says? Why should I not shoot you where you stand?”
“Is there anyone else here?” Tyree asked.
“Everyone else ran away. The cowardly Freeholders first, of course.”
Tyree’s emotions fought a war every bit as complex as the one at the pit. James’s instruction had been specific. Everyone needed to leave. He had not explained why, because time had been short. But Tyree had the sense that nobody inside would live through whatever James had planned.
But these people were Victors. They threatened him for no reason except that they had guns and numbers; because of that, they considered themselves better than Freeholders. Guns and numbers had caused them to believe that.
Tyree had believed the opposite. He had descended to their level when he started to kill. He had set himself and his people above the Victors, in his own heart.
James had tried to point out that people were people, each as good as the other, though outside forces could lead them astray. For most of his life, Tyree had believed that. But then he had stopped, had started to think one group was better than others, simply by virtue of who they were, who their mothers and fathers had been.
He saw, now, where such thinking led.
“Please,” Tyree said. “You do not have to trust me, but please believe me. You need to get away from this building, and quickly. Once you have, you can kill me if you still want to. But get out, now.”
The Victors exchanged glances. The woman lowered her weapon. “You’re not even worth a bullet,” she said with a sneer. “Go. Run away, like the dog you are.”
“You’ll go?” Tyree asked, ignoring the insult.
“Yes, all right. We’ll go.”
“And there’s no one else inside?”
“Don’t press your luck,” the male Victor said. “We’re alone, and we’re leaving.”
“Thank you,” Tyree said. He stood there a moment longer, until the woman gestured toward the door with her rifle. Tyree ran, half-expecting a bullet in his back. When he was well clear of the building, he looked over his shoulder and saw the Victors emerging. Then he heard a low rumble, coming closer, from the direction that James and Apella had gone.
A huge, floating thing came toward him. He had never seen its like. It was enormous, bigger than the grandest tent he had ever seen. Any of the buildings in Victory could fit inside it and leave room for more. It moved through the air—warping the space beneath it as heat did rising from a fire—like a slow, ungainly bird.
When they saw it, the pair of Victors broke into a run, putting as much distance between themselves and the smelter building as they could. Tyree thought that was a most excellent plan, and he did the same.
He was still running when a bolt of green lightning arced from the floating thing and hit the smelter, wailing as if to mourn all the dead since the first Villager had used the first fire stick.
Instinctively, Tyree threw himself to the ground.
As he did, the smelter building exploded. The walls blew apart, sending debris in every direction. Tyree, flat on the ground, felt a wave of force, like a strong wind, wash over him, and then bits of wreckage sliced into his arms and legs and face. A ball of fire erupted from inside, brightening the night like daytime and rising toward the sky as it seared into his vision. A deafening thunder struck at the same time.
When those things passed, bits of the structure plummeted down from on high, a rain of stone and metal and he knew not what else. What was left of the building was aflame, and thick, oily black smoke billowed up until it disappeared against the blackness of the night, only the lack of visible stars defining its existence.
Although he could not see James, he assumed the floating thing was some kind of craft, perhaps the Klingon freighter James had spoken of, and he knew his friend was responsible for what had happened.
Tyree rose unsteadily to his feet, bleeding from a score of wounds. His ears rang, he was dizzy, and he couldn’t blink away a pale green afterimage of the fireball. But he started toward the pit, and within moments Tyree saw people coming toward him, Freeholders and Victors. They weren’t fighting, for the moment. They wore expressions of awe, terror, or confusion. But they came together, side by side, and no one was shooting or hitting or stabbing the other.
Was this what James had in mind? He couldn’t say, for sure.
For the moment, though, it would do.
* * *
“Impressive, Kirk,” Krell said. “But what did it get you?”
“I won’t know that for a while yet,” Kirk said. He jabbed a finger at the red triangle on the flight control panel. “Right now, we’ve got another problem to worry about.”
“Ah, yes, the ChonnaQ grows closer.”
“Will your crew do what I tell them to?”
“Within reason.”
“Then get us into orbit. If that ship attacks us, I don’t want casualties on the ground.”
“You don’t think your little display already did that?”
“If my instructions were followed, the building was empty, and the area around it clear,” Kirk said.
“And if they were not?”
“I’m only one man. I can’t do everything myself.”
“A shortcoming we all share, I’m afraid.” Krell turned toward the remaining two members of the bridge crew. “Do as he says.”
One of them grunted assent and tapped at his controls, and the ship soared skyward. Kirk felt the familiar stomach-dropping sensation of a rapid ascent, in atmosphere. He looked to see how Apella was handling it, but the man simply looked morose. “My smelter,” he said.
“It can be rebuilt,” Kirk offered. He
turned back to the control panel. Every ship, even a Klingon freighter, had a comm system. He doubted that Krell’s cooperation would extend to showing him how to work it. But it was possible that the Captain Cook was still in range, and if it was, he needed to reach it.
If it wasn’t . . . well, this ship’s defenses would not hold off a Klingon bird-of-prey for long. “Does this vessel have shields?” he asked.
“Of course,” Krell answered. “Low-level ones.”
“Get them up,” Kirk said. “How about cloaking?”
“No.”
“Shields, then. And keep climbing.”
“The faster we climb, the sooner we meet our end.”
“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. Employ all possible defensive measures.” He wasn’t sure to what extent the Klingons could be trusted to obey that order. The fact that Krell talked so much about honor led Kirk to believe that the concept was genuinely one that mattered to him. He had always had a low opinion of Klingons, but he was willing to admit that he might have misjudged them. Their priorities were different than his, their goals and motivations alien to him. But Krell had said the crew would obey orders, within reason, and he had no basis on which to doubt him.
He turned back to the comm system, determined to figure it out.
Thirty-Two
“We’re en route, Admiral,” Captain Grumm said. “Hang on as long as you can.”
One more volley from the Klingon bird-of-prey hit the freighter squarely. The ship rocked sickeningly. Sparks flew from an instrument panel as the punishing impact shorted out yet another circuit. The bridge was already thick with smoke; this simply exacerbated that and added a sharp, coppery tang to the air.
“Hanging on, Grumm,” Kirk said into the comm panel. “But if you don’t hurry, you won’t be able to do anything for us but pick up the pieces.” He turned toward his bridge crew, such as it was. “Shields?”
Serpents in the Garden Page 23
